Having your own network to organize a Book Club

For people that like to read books, setting up a network for your own book club can be a helpful way to share some of the new perspectives you’re picking up. Whether for your favorite fiction, non fiction, sci fi, history, romance, poetry, philosophy, mythology, biographies, children’s stories, comedy, tragedy, horror, mysteries, thrillers or any combination of the above, here’s a few benefits you get from sharing with others as well how to organize a book club using an Odysen network.

Benefits of a Book Club

With sharing what you’ve read with a few others, you get an opportunity to share the new perspectives you’ve learned, maybe learn about something you missed and get other ideas of new authors or books to read.

Common Perspectives: When you read a book, you don’t just get the main idea or what the story or topic is about, but also the thousand little details that put it together. With that, if wishing to discuss a few of these ideas with others can obviously be enormously helpful if they’ve also read it, can go beyond the main idea into the details, sub-plots or specific characters involved.

Better Jokes: If sharing with others that have also read the book, any jokes you have about it don’t need an extra ten minutes of preparation for the person to understand the context. You can let er rip, one after another after another, rolling all the way.

New Directions: As books can act as stepping stones, often by the time you get done with one, you have ideas of 2-3 others to get into. Maybe similar to every answer only gives you more questions but nevertheless, you have new directions to go. With sharing in a book club, others can share their own directions, combine them with yours, have a better idea of what’s next.

New Authors: With having your own book club, you have a better chance of finding out about completely new authors that there’s a good chance you’ll be interested in. While you can do this yourself by visiting a book store or Amazon and just browsing anything, when you get a recommendation from a friend or somebody that knows you, chances are it’ll be an order of magnitude more relevant for what you’d be interested in or are looking for. Plus, you can ask questions, get a better idea of what’s it about and maybe even what to pay attention to, providing of course it doesn’t give way the mystery or surprise if relevant.

Social Events: Besides books, books and more books, you also have a group of friends to get together, whether on a weekly, monthly, holiday events or other occasions. After all, if your group is interested in similar types of books, or reading in general, you also probably can have some interesting conversations on a range of other topics.

How to Use with Odysen

Once you have an idea for a book club and know who might be interested in it, here’s how you can create your own network for it.

From your account, click the Networks section and click the link to Create a New Network. As it doesn’t cost anything to create a new network, you don’t have to worry about paying for something in case it doesn’t work out, such as with book club, the network or both. Everyone starts off as a Basic user, able to create new networks and use a majority of the applications and features. If you or others really like the network, you can always upgrade to the Premium subscription for just $1.99 per month, giving a few extra applications, features and storage.

Add in the name of the network and the sub-domain, such as for the name being Nobody’s Book Club, the sub-domain could be nobodybookclub, with the URL for your network being https://nobodybookclub.odysen.com. When later accessing your network, other users don’t have to type in the whole network name, this can be done either directly from an email link or from seeing your network in the Networks section of their Odysen account.

Invite other users for your book club, either from the All folder or from the Manage Network section.

Create folders for the different topics or area’s of interest, with sub-folders as appropriate, eventually leading to even having a folder for each book. Within each folder are applications you can share content with.

Add a note of your own summary of the book, include a bullet or number list for setting up an outline.

Others can give feedback to the note or any other content by adding a comment, making an impromptu discussion board for your group.

If available, add other websites that discuss the book, sometimes found for more popular authors such as Douglas Adams, or stories that have been around for awhile such as Gilgamesh.

Add other websites that book may be referencing to, such as reading a book that’s based in Ireland and having a few websites that highlight the areas of interest.

Create events for getting together with others in your book club, maybe for coffee or a beer. Add a recurring event if it’s on a monthly basis, include an event alert if any extra preparation is needed, such as the time needed to travel or meet a certain place and time.

See integrated views of notes, websites or other content simply by clicking on the respective parent folders. From there is an option to view content from the sub-folders or only from the folder you’re looking at.

Stay informed of any new content or comments shared with you by adding a newsletter to the network. This will automatically check the network on an hourly, daily, weekly or longer basis and if there’s any new content, you’ll receive an email with a summary of the changes.

Yeah, books can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Whether an escape, a learning experience or entertainment, spending a little bit of time here and there with a good book can be a great way to get a refreshed or a new perspective.

Using a network to share with others can help to stay connected or informed by having a centralized place for the different types of books and topics that you’re interested in.

Published by

Matt

Founder and CEO of Odysen, involved with different writing and music freelancing activities, and have previously worked for larger technology businesses in the US, Europe and Asia.
View all posts by Matt